These two things are both true: the Sixers should have won more than one game against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals and the Celtics exposed some severe and fundamental weaknesses in the Sixers’ roster that need fixing.

Shortly after that series ended, I did a deep dive on what those issues are, and what the Sixers should do to patch them up. But the skinny is this: there was a critical lack of versatility both in terms of players’ abilities to play both ends and in terms of their skills on the end where they were expected to contribute.

No player on the Sixers’ roster last year could, for lack of more nuanced terms, both shoot and handle the ball. Marco Belinelli, J.J. Redick and Robert Covington can all shoot. They also have serious ball-handling limitations to varying degrees. Ben Simmons and T.J. McConnell can both penetrate a defense, but neither is apt to shoot outside of 12 feet.